Turnout or Vote Margin? How Did Hillary Clinton Lose?

My first post on this blog in years comes on the day after Donald J. Trump won a stunning election over Hillary Clinton and made us all come to grips with the coming horror show that will be a Trump administration. Democrats, college-educated whites, and minorities all over America are wondering, how did we fuck this up? There are plenty of takes on this issue from just about every media outlet around the world today about scandals, political vision, polling, and the media's role in this outcome, but I'm going to focus very simply on one question: what does a Trump electorate look like? Who is responsible for this mess? 

I was listening to NPR this morning, and I heard one of the hosts ask a guest about minority turnout being down. The guest pushed back very hard against this narrative about minority turnout being to blame and focused instead on the white vote margins, which broke hard for Trump.  So I looked into the exit polls from last night to come up with some answers and see which of these perspectives is right. It turns out that with only a couple of exceptions, it was the overwhelming and sudden turn towards conservatism by white voters that governed this election. 

My analysis focuses exclusively on race and the share of turnout in the last four presidential elections in exit polls for 25 states in four different regions of the U.S. 

White turnout

White turnout in the Northeast as a percentage of the overall electorate was mostly down, continuing the demographic trends of past elections. The big exception to this though was Pennsylvania, where the white share of voters increased from 78% in 2012 to 81% in 2016. This was the difference between a 1 point Clinton win and a 1 point Trump win.    

In the South, white turnout was again mostly down as a percentage of the overall electorate. The exceptions were North Carolina and South Carolina, though neither increase by itself was enough to have an effect on the outcome.

The decreasing trend from 2012 to 2016 in white share of the electorate seen in other regions was not seen in several key states in the Midwest. The white share of the vote in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Missouri was not lower than in 2012, and Trump won all three of those states. However, the white share of the electorate was still down from 2004 and 2008, when Democrats won those states. White turnout alone in the Midwest was not the reason that Trump won. 

White turnout in the West has been shrinking more rapidly than in other parts of the country, but the trend slowed down in 2016 or reversed itself altogether in the case of Arizona and Washington. I think it's interesting that over the past 12 years, Arizona's and Nevada's electorates have diverged, so that now Nevada's electorate resembles Las Vegas, while Arizona's electorate now more closely resembles Colorado's. Arizona was always a stretch for the Clinton campaign, and to turn it blue, Arizona's electorate would have had to have been much less white. That didn't happen.

Black Turnout

In New York, the black share of the electorate was stronger than it has ever been, at over 20%. In New Hampshire and Maine, black people don't exist. But in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the black share of the electorate fell by four and three percentage points, respectively. This, combined with the white turnout mentioned earlier, turned Pennsylvania from a 5 point Obama win to a 1 point Trump win. (It also dropped the Democrats' margin in New Jersey by 5 points, from an 18 point Obama victory to a 13 point Clinton victory.)

But Pennsylvania was only one state, and the mechanics of the Trump win were different in other states.

  

As a share of the total turnout, black turnout in the south was as strong as ever in Florida, Virginia and Georgia, but fell a few percentage points in the Carolinas. This is notable in North Carolina because there was significantly less early voting in 2016 than in 2012 due to a law passed by the North Carolina state legislature in 2013. Though the law was struck down by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, the early voting restrictions remained in place in many counties, including early voting on Sundays, which hurt black turnout. But black turnout was also way down in South Carolina, which doesn't have early voting, but also didn't have early voting in 2008 or 2004.

Black turnout versus white turnout was an important component of the Clinton loss in North Carolina, providing about 3.5 percentage points of her 4 percentage point loss.

Black turnout as a percentage of the electorate in the Midwest was mostly flat from 2012 to 2016, with the exception of Illinois, where turnout rose from 2012. However, in every state with exit polls in the Midwest, turnout was more diverse than in 2004. 

At Vox, Brad Plumer expounded on a tweet from NPR's Domenico Montanaro that compared Clinton's vote totals for Milwaukee and Detroit to Obama's vote totals from 2012, and argued that this was the reason that Clinton lost Wisconsin and Michigan.

In case that tweet is hard to read, Clinton garnered 129,000 fewer votes in heavily Democratic Detroit than Obama did four years ago — and lost the state by around 61,000 total votes. She also got 95,000 fewer votes in heavily Democratic Milwaukee than Obama did — and lost the state by 73,000 total votes.

Well, it is true that Clinton got 95,000 fewer votes from Milwaukee than Obama did, but Trump also got 30,000 fewer votes there than Romney did. Obama won Milwaukee 67% to 32%, and Clinton won Milwaukee 66% to 29%. Detroit is a different story: 73%-26% for Obama, but only 67%-30% for Clinton as of right now, and the vote margin in Wayne County is actually now 95,000 off from the Obama-Romney totals. 

The narrow margin in Michigan means that there are many potential causes for Clinton's (presumed) loss, and so turnout could be one of them. Clinton is currently down by 0.3% in Michigan, but if 16% of the electorate was black voters like in 2012 instead of the 15% that it ended up at, Clinton's position would have improved by about 0.8%. But my point is, black turnout was only 12% in 2008, and Obama won by 17 percentage points. Something else went down in Michigan.

In the west, the black percentage of the electorate is less than 10% everywhere. Though black turnout fell (especially in California), it wasn't a large enough component of the electorate to make a difference to the presidential race.

Hispanic Turnout

I thought the 2016 election would be a breakout moment for the Hispanic electorate, but while the Hispanic share did rise nationally, the rate wasn't as meteoric as I would have hoped given Donald Trump's stance on immigration and the abilities of Indiana judge Gonzalo Curiel. Still, Hispanic turnout share wasn't down, and barring other changes this should have at least locked in 2012's electoral map. But it didn't.

Latinos are still a small percentage of the electorate in the Northeast, but besides New York, the Hispanic share of the electorate rose or, in Pennsylvania's case, remained steady. In order for Latinos to have swung Pennsylvania to the Clinton column, they would have needed to increase their share of the electorate by two percentage points at the expense of the white turnout over 2012's electorate, and that was probably unlikely anyways.  

The Hispanic population in the South is only large enough to make an electoral impact in the states of Florida and Texas, and it turns out that they showed up to the polls in 2016. In part because of strong Hispanic turnout in Texas, Trump's margin appears to be smaller than Romney's was in 2012. However, that was not the case in Florida, won by Obama twice, which went for Trump despite the Hispanic share of the electorate increasing 5 percent since 2008. Therefore, unlike in Pennsylvania, turnout was not the determining factor in Clinton's loss in Florida.

The Hispanic portion of the electorate was not large enough to have much of an effect on the 2012 election in the Midwest (except in Illinois), and the Hispanic portion of the electorate continued to not be large enough to have much of an effect on the 2016 election in the Midwest (except in Illinois). 

Conversely, Hispanic turnout is very important to Democratic victories in the West. But while California and New Mexico showed stronger Hispanic turnout than in 2012 (in California's case, an increase of an astounding 9 percentage points), the Hispanic share of the electorate was flat or decreasing in Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Washington. In Nevada, Colorado and Washington, this didn't have an effect on the outcome (though it almost did in Nevada). But in Arizona, an unexpected decrease in Hispanic turnout share meant that Clinton's dreams for winning the state never had a chance.

Overall, with few exceptions, the turnout of minorities was not down and turnout of white people was not up, at least not as a share of the overall electorate. One of the exceptions was Pennsylvania, where minority turnout was decisive, and turnout also played a limited role in the Trump win in North Carolina. But Florida and most of the surprise states in the Midwest were won by Trump not because black and Hispanic people didn't get to the polls, but rather because the white voters who showed up were overwhelmingly more Republican than white voters in past elections. 

White vote margins

For these graphs, an upward movement indicates more votes for the Democrat while a downward movement indicates more votes for the Republican. In the Northeast, more white voters chose Trump than chose Romney. Only in Maine did Clinton win white voters, barely, while in New Hampshire, for the first time since 2000, the Democrat lost the white vote. New Hampshire's very small community of minority voters was just large enough to save the state for Clinton, by a whopping 0.2% as of this writing.

But most interesting to me is the fact that Pennsylvania's white voters did not choose Trump much more than they chose Romney in 2012, when Romney lost the state by 5 points. In Pennsylvania, like almost nowhere else in the country, it really was turnout that made the difference and not the increased conservative nature of white folk.  

White Democratic voters in the South have been in the minority for awhile, and all the points above are well below the zero-line for Democrats, but movement towards Trump was only a big feature in one of these states: Florida. Democrats went from losing white voters by 24 percentage points in 2012 to losing white voters by 31 percentage points, and this made all the difference in the outcome, even though white turnout share declined by five points. 

Notice that North Carolina's white voters actually grew more liberal. While turnout share for white people slightly increased, those voters were also slightly more Democratic than in 2012. While Clinton's loss in North Carolina wasn't entirely due to lower black turnout, it also wasn't even partially due to an increasingly conservative white electorate, as in other states.

Georgia was another stretch goal of the Clinton campaign, but it was always going to require either massive black turnout or a liberalization of the white vote akin to what has happened in Virginia and North Carolina.  But Georgia's white vote was as solidly Republican as ever, so it didn't happen. Texas though got closer.

This is, I believe, the most meaningful chart to explain Clinton's loss of the Midwest and therefore the presidency. The Northeast's white voters plunged more conservative, but they started from a high Democratic Party preference. The South's white voters have been staunchly conservative for some time, but they did not grow more conservative with the Trump election. However, the Midwest has seen its white voters grow rapidly conservative since they elected Obama in 2008. 

Look at 2008. White voters approved of the Democrat in Illinois, sure, but also Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Ohio wasn't so far behind either. Since that election, white voters in the Midwest turned hard against Democrats, in both 2012 and 2016. White Michigan voters went 51% - 47% for Obama in 2008. Clinton just lost them 36% to 57%! A 25-point swing in just eight years!

It is almost the same story in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and Missouri. White voters moved 21 percentage points more Republican in Wisconsin, 19 percentage points in Ohio, 23 percentage points in both Indiana and Missouri. In 2012, Democrats overcame the drop in Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin by turning out minority voters, which was enough to keep the Midwest blue for a cycle. But the white vote continued to plummet for Democrats, and it was too much for minority voters to overcome. And it wasn't turnout at all. The electorate was marginally more diverse than in 2012, and certainly more diverse than in 2004. It was just that white voters are voting for Republicans by much larger margins than they used to. 

However the white apocalypse for Clinton was not a national phenomenon, it was just a Midwest / Northeast thing. White voters in the South were more or less the same, while white voters in the West actually turned more toward Clinton than they had for Obama in 2012, for the most part. White voters actually picked Clinton in California and Washington, while the margin was close enough in Colorado and New Mexico that Latino voters were able to overcome the margins and give Clinton comfortable wins in those states. Arizona was competitive for so long even though white turnout was up only because white voters moved 21 percentage points closer to the Democrat. 

Nevada almost went to Trump because it was the one western state (with exit polls) that showed more white voters were voting Republican than in years past. Clinton's win in that state, at 2.5%, will be much narrower than Obama's 7 point victory over Romney.

Black vote margins

The margins that black voters gave to Hillary Clinton were down fairly significantly everywhere from the margins that black voters gave to Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012. (I don't know what the deal is with Illinois either.) The effect was more noticeable in some states than others, but determinative in almost none due to the fact that black voters don't make up a huge part of the electorate in many states. However, the effect moved the polls almost 2% more towards Trump in North Carolina, so that when combined with the lower black turnout it proved to be consequential. If black turnout in 2016 in North Carolina was the same as in 2012, and if black voters voted for Clinton by the same margins as they voted for Obama in 2012, then North Carolina would have gone for Clinton.  

Georgia, with its 30% black electorate, had the potential to be very close for Clinton if black voters voted for Clinton at the same (rather insane) 98% to 2% margin they voted for Obama in 2008, but very close is not the same as "would have won".

Florida's black voters, though smaller proportional to the electorate than other Southern states, had one of the larger movements towards Trump among black voters nationally, and had they voted at the same rate for Clinton as they did for Obama in 2012, Clinton's position would be 1.5 percentage points better. That is just about the margin by which Trump will beat her in Florida.

Hispanic vote margins

 

Even with all the anti-Mexican rhetoric from Trump on the campaign trail, Latinos voted for Hillary Clinton at lower margins nationally than they had for Barack Obama in 2012. 

While the margins that black voters gave Democrats were pretty much the same everywhere, there was a great diversity to the Latino vote depending on the state. However, the small size of the Latino electorate in most states means that the movements aren't very impactful. In Florida and Texas, Hispanics are generally more conservative than Hispanics in the rest of the nation, but Florida's Hispanics have grown precipitously more liberal in the last 12 years, and that trend continued in 2016, so it had no effect on Trump's victory in that state.  The effect of Texas's relatively conservative Latinos amounted to about 4 percentage points for Trump, but Trump won Texas by 9 or 10 points, so this isn't determinative of the result. 

In the West, Latinos actually moved more in Trump's direction than they did in Romney's in 2012 in Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico. Clinton still won all those states but Arizona, which put a particularly sharp decline in the Democrat's margin from 2012. If Hispanics in Arizona voted for Hillary Clinton at the same vote margin that they voted for Barack Obama in 2012, Clinton would have done 3 points better in Arizona. However, she's losing by about 4.5 points now.

Conclusions

CNN looked at the national exit polls to do an autopsy of the Clinton loss, but they placed the blame on "African American, Latino and younger voters". But while it is true that turnout overall was down, Clinton lost primarily because white voters in the Midwest (and Florida) have grown substantially more conservative. States that Obama won in 2008 that Clinton lost included Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan (probably), Ohio, Indiana and Florida, and in all these states, the biggest electoral effect came not from minority turnout but rather from a more conservative white electorate. Only in two states won by Obama but lost by Clinton (North Carolina and Pennsylvania) did minority turnout have a greater effect on the election than the white turn towards Trump.

Hillary Clinton Wishes She Was a Republican

There's less than a minute left on the game clock in the primary season game of hoops, and Hillary Clinton is down by 200. She's still trying, still reacting to things Barack Obama does and says, and organizing protests at DNC meetings; in other words, she's fouling like crazy in order to extend the game. After all, Obama is only a mediocre free-throw shooter. But after the last primaries on June 3, the shot clock will be off, and she should be able to call off the horses and let Obama dribble the clock out until the convention in August.

If only Hillary Clinton was a Republican, she would have already locked up the nomination.

I had heard that if the Democrats used the delegate-selection system that Republicans use, then Clinton would be ahead in delegates, but I couldn't find any numbers to tell me exactly by how much. So I charted the delegates won by Obama and Clinton on a primary by primary basis in real life and as if they were apportioned using whichever rules the GOP was using in that contest. In most states, the Republicans use winner-take-all or winner-take-most, but there are a few (e.g. Iowa, North Carolina) where the splits are more proportional to the popular vote. I had to guess on some contests (particularly the winner-take-almost-all primaries), but I have come up with (I think) a fairly reasonable estimate of the difference between the number of pledged delegates Clinton would have and the number of pledged delegates Obama would have if the Democrats copied the Republican's rules, shown below.

Hillary Clinton is down by around 162 pledged delegates in real life, but she's up by around 429 pledged delegates in the GOP-style fantasy situation. Her chances are slim at best, and people are calling for her to quit campaigning and step aside at a deficit of 162. But if Obama had a deficit of more than 2.5 times that, he'd already have had to quit and yield to the mathematical certainty of a Clinton nomination.


So why fuck around with delegates, respective political parties? This is supposed to be a government where people directly elect representatives. Yet even the general election we have the electoral college, not the people, deciding who the next commander-in-chief will be, and sometimes the result can be very different. Why should the political parties mimic this inane system? Since a 600-delegate swing exists when different rules are in play, why must we mess around with unnecessary layers of representative amalgamation that serve only to distort the will of the people?

Who's the Real Democrat?

This post is probably written a week or two late but I've been a bit busy recently.

Hillary Clinton has been making the absolutely ludicrous argument that she makes a better general election candidate because the traditionally blue states have selected her as their Democratic nominee rather than Barack Obama. This is insane for three reasons.

1. The Democratic primary has very little bearing on how the states will elect the president in November. Somehow I just don't see California, New York, New Jersey and most of New England voting for John McCain in November. Blue states don't turn into red states just because their shade of blue didn't prevail. Just ask Vermont.

2. If the democratic primary did have anything to do with the general election, wouldn't it be better if a candidate showed broad appeal from independents and some Republicans rather than narrow appeal from the hard-core leftist party members who would be more likely to vote a straight party ticket anyways? In general elections, the moderate voters will always determine the outcome of an election, since it is almost inconceivable to attract support from both the far-left and the far-right with no support from the middle (unless you're Ron Paul). Therefore, it would seem to me that the candidate the voters in the middle prefer should be the most viable candidate in November. Typically Democrats in red states tend to me more moderate than their blue state brothers, so if you're trying to pick off a few reddish swing states to win an election (Colorado, Missouri), you want to get in good with those Democrats. Admittedly, winning hard-core red states like Utah or Montana doesn't really say anything about the viability of the candidate in the general election, but it's for the same reason that winning Massachusetts and California doesn't say anything about the viability of the candidate.

3. Clinton could be arguing that not being able to win blue states means that Obama is not a true Democrat and does not share Democratic values. But take a look at these maps:

If these were general election maps, which color do you think would represent the Democratic nominee? Would it be blue which is found mostly in small rural communities, or would it be green which is found in large numbers in the big cities? In Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana, Missouri and Texas, Barack Obama (green) won the cities, which almost always go Democratic. In Pennsylvania, he won Philly big. The man won in San Francisco for god's sake! And yet, Hillary Clinton thinks that Barack Obama can't win these blue states. I hate to tell her, but Obama's support in these states came from the same people that will be voting for the Democrat in November, while Hillary's came from the rural towns and counties that will colored bright red on CNN's maps in November.

So, this is a really dumb argument that could favor either candidate.


(Thanks for the maps, NY Times)

Where the Real Election Is

The vultures were picking at Hillary Clinton in late February as the media was beginning to leave her for dead in the presidential race. But last night Clinton staged another comeback by winning Texas and Ohio primaries without the aid of crying in front of television audiences (for once). And now the theme in the press is that Clinton's campaign is rejuvenated, and the primary will still be quite contested until the Democratic Convention, which will give every Democrat in America the chance for their primary votes to actually mean something (incluso ustedes, Puerto Rico). This is a lie.

After last night's primaries, it is now mathematically impossible for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to win the nomination without the aid of superdelegates. Unlike pledged delegates, superdelegates can vote whichever way they choose using whatever rationale they choose, and as Georgia representative John Lewis proved last week, they are not even obligated to stay on the same side that they had previously "committed" to. Even if Barack Obama, the pledged delegate leader, were to win 100% of the remaining pledged delegates, he would still have to make sure that at least 46 of his superdelegates remained on his side.

Now, in all likelihood it would not be hard at all to retain the support of 46 fickle party leaders, but a complete sweep of pledged delegates from now until the convention will never happen, not even if Mike "I Majored in Miracles" Huckabee was still in the race. At the very best, you're never going to get more than 75% of people in a state to agree on the same person, and that would be even assuming some kind of major blunder by an opponent. If Barack Obama won 75% of the remaining pledged delegates, he would still need 200 superdelegates. Since both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be campaigning as hard as they can the next month or two, no candidate will get more than about 55% of the remaining delegates. This means Obama will need somewhere between 320-380 superdelegates to gain the nomination, while Clinton will need somewhere between 460-520. This is the only part of the primary election that still matters.

If I was a candidate running for president and looking at these numbers, I would be diverting as many of my resources as legally possible in trying to convince everyone on the superdelegate list that I was the best choice. I'm not really sure what lobbying rules there are for buying influence with superdelegates, but I'd be buying all that I could buy because basically the pledged delegates no longer matter. Obama for instance has already raised somewhere like $80 million this year. If I had that money, you can bet that I'd be buying every superdelegate a few steak dinners, a few new cars and a high dollar hooker or two (but then, I'd be corrupt). But my point is that at best, all the campaigning, rallying and debating in the world will only serve now to reduce the number of superdelegates needed by about 50 or 60. It's a much more efficient use of time and money to go exclusively after superdelegates.

(Reference: Slate's Delegate Calculator)

I Got It, I Got It!!!

From Marc Ambinder at theatlantic.com:

The Clinton campaign said tonight that Obama precinct workers illegally obtained caucus packets in the following Texas caucus precincts:

Precinct 2316 in Tarrant County
Precinct 1205 in Dallas County
Precinct 3127 in Bexar County
Precinct 3082 in Ft. Bend County
Precinct 18/224 in Harris County (Houston)
Precinct 3221 Dallas county
Precinct 87 in El Paso County
Precinct 458 in Travis County

Basically, whoever "gets the packet" controls the caucus. Technically, before the caucus begins at 7:15 CT, the packet is controlled by the precinct judge. But in reality, it might just be laying on a table somewhere. The Clinton campaign claims to have evidence that Obama supporters have, in eight instances, obtained in far in advance, which violates the rules set out by the state party.

There's nothing the state party can or will do. They're overwhelmed at the moment.

Wait, so the Texas caucus is won basically by a rousing game of Capture the Flag? This is democracy?

Kid Gloves and Non-Traditional Constituencies

A few weeks ago, Bill Clinton chided the media for what he thought was the media's kid glove treatment of Barack Obama. Never fond of criticism, the media retorted with several news cycles worth of "Why Can't Hillary Control Husband?" and "Bill to Innocent Reporter: 'Shame On You!'". But like many things the media overblows, there is actually a kernel of truth to the former President's accusations.

Today news analysts have been talking about John McCain's multiple decisive victories in yesterday's primaries, but they have been withholding their declaration of McCain's inevitability as the Republican Party presidential nominee, citing that he won most of his big victories in blue states, or states that would not support a Republican nominee in the general election no matter how many tax cuts he voted against. This is seen as a negative against McCain, the thinking goes. He'll get blown out in states where he's actually popular in the primaries, and people won't vote for him in states where he's not popular in the primaries. But the same analysts have said that Barack Obama is the most electable candidate on the Democratic side because he is popular in traditionally red states.

While Hillary Clinton was dancing last night with the big shining jewels of the Democratic party such as California, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts, Obama was slumming it with the red state puu-puu platter of Alaska, Alabama, Georgia, North Dakota, Utah and Idaho. Of the 27 states that have had Democratic primaries or caucuses so far*, 17 voted for Bush in 2000, and Obama has won 10 of them to Clinton's 7. If you look at the electoral votes of those states with Democratic primaries and caucuses so far, there are 143 red state electoral votes and 178 blue state electoral votes, if you count red states as "States that voted for George W. Bush in 2000". While Clinton and Obama have nearly evenly split the red state electoral votes (73 for Obama, 70 for Clinton), Hillary Clinton has an overwhelming total of blue state electoral votes (130 to 48). If you define red state / blue state by the 2004 election, the split is even more lopsided (134 to 41).

Using the same analysis for the Republican side, McCain has won 67 red state electoral votes (most of which come from Florida), compared to Huckabee's 46 and Romney's 31. McCain however has won a ton of blue state electoral votes, 132, compared to Huckabee's 7 and Romney's 43.

So if winning 132 blue state electoral vote equivalents hurts Republican McCain, why doesn't losing 130 of them hurt Democrat Obama in the media's eyes? Is it kid gloves? Or am I just doing way too much math on things that don't actually matter?



*Not counting New Mexico, where yet another hangup in the vote counting had delayed results. There's always a problem with voting in New Mexico for some reason *cough corruption cough cough*, but that's a post for another time.

Super Tuesday Came, and I Brought My Coat

I love election nights! It mixes three of my favorite things all together: arithmetic, politics and maps. Last night may have only been a jumble of state primaries, but there were so many of them that it felt like a national election, with states being falsely projected for candidates and analysts struggling with delegate math. And like the 2000 national election, it wasn't decisive at all.

Nationally, it is a tight race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with the Democratic Party nomination entirely up for grabs. But in Oklahoma, Hillary Clinton won fairly decisively. Analysts have chalked it up to the fact that Oklahoma borders Arkansas, one of Hillary's many home states, and therefore Hillary would be a regional favorite. This may be partially true, especially as to why Hillary was on top of the polls before anyone started campaigning, but I think a factor just as important to that was that Barack Obama not only avoided campaigning here in person, but Oklahoma was also one of only two Super Tuesday states where he didn't run television ads. Hillary may have won big, but Obama certainly didn't try to woo any Sooners to his side.

Analysts also chalked up the reason Obama did so poorly here to our closed primary, which shuts out independents and left-leaning Republicans, an important demographic for Obama. What analysts didn't notice was that this effect was magnified by the demographics of the Democratic party in this state. Like many southerners, most Oklahomans were registered Democrats before the 70s, even though they still voted very conservatively. During the 70s and after, a change occurred so that most Oklahomans started registering Republican. This means that most of Oklahoma's registered Democrats are now over 65, a demographic that tends to vote in this election for Hillary. 42% of the Democratic primary voters were 60 and over, and they voted overwhelmingly for Clinton (64% to 23%).

Analysts were also surprised that John Edwards, a candidate who dropped out of the presidential race last week, did so well here in Oklahoma and speculated that the reason was that Oklahomans still remembered him fondly from his close 2nd place in the state in 2004. I think the real reason Edwards was able to pull more than 10% and even beat Obama in some counties was that he actually campaigned here. No other democratic candidate actually set foot in the state, although Bill Clinton did drop by OU's campus. Of course, maybe Oklahoma democrats just don't pay attention to current events and didn't realize that Edwards had left the building. After all it is monster truck season; voters may have had other things on their minds.

On the Republican side, John McCain won a close race over Mike Huckabee, as predicted by the polls. I'm not exactly sure why, though. It would seem that Oklahoma should have been Huckabee country, what with all our Baptist churches and light-up crosses on the sides of our tall buildings. But I guess there is a limit to how far evangelical votes can go. Although, like all the southern states, had there been a candidate named Romnabee, a Baptist minister with business experience, he would already be the next unified Republican party presidential candidate.

Slate's Primary Prediction Competition

Okay, so I've got Edwards and Huckabee in the pool for tonight caucus in Iowa, with Obama and Romney to place and Clinton and McCain to show.

Huckabee's Run Is No Surprise

The media shouldn't be at all surprised about the surgence of Mike Huckabee in many polls, including in Iowa, where this poll says he's leading all Republican candidates. The first indications of this surge was after the Iowa straw poll back in August, and even though it's a made-up contest where candidates get to give money to people to vote for them and the richest guy in the race won, it seemed to mean a lot to Huckabee. But even besides this, the media should have recognized that voters at large and especially Iowa Republicans dislike four things in candidates: being a senator, being a putz, being a bullshitter, and being a New Yorker / New Englander.

For some reason, there are always several members of the U.S. Senate who believe that being a U.S. Senator is a stepping stone to the presidency. You senators in this presidential race are only fooling yourselves. The only person to ascend to the office of the President directly from being a member of the Senate since Warren G. Harding was John F. Kennedy, and, well, as the Lloyd Bentsen famously said, you're no Jack Kennedy. Fortunately for Mike Huckabee, he happens to be a governor.

No one likes a putz, which is the reason Bill Richardson is slipping in polls. Being a putz is hard to define, but being overweight and tongue tied in debates are two key indicators. Fortunately for Mike Huckabee, he is perhaps best known for getting his lard butt in shape through diet and exercise, and no longer carries any visible putz-like qualities. Huckabee is certainly less putzy than Fred Thompson, which is the other candidate most like him in his views.

Being a bull-shitter may work for some, but its usually best to save all your best bullshitting for when you have already achieved the highest office you're gunning for. This will hurt Mitt Romney when the primaries come around, and it may even hurt Rudy Giuliani, one of our generations finest bullshitters (and I mean that mostly as a compliment). Fortunately for Mike Huckabee, he is viewed as a straight-talker, even though somebody else already stole that idea for their bus.

Lastly, New Yorkers and New Englanders are always viewed more scrutinizingly by Republicans and Independents. It's generally the opinion of the rest of the country that those guys are obnoxious, a viewpoint reinforced by ESPN's incessant coverage of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry and the existence of Ben Affleck. It's why John Kerry lost the last election (we didn't realize how much of a putz he was until we thought about it later), it's why Michael Dukakis never stood a chance, and it's why Hillary Clinton won't win the general election. Okay, that and the bullshitting thing. Iowa Republicans have been looking for a candidate with flyover country cred, but without being too twangy (Thompson) or Strangeloveian (Tom Tancredo). And now, as John Madden would say, boom! Mike Huckabee hits the hole and keeps his feet moving!

My Presidential Guarantee

I've been telling my dad this for months, so I'll go ahead and say it here. I'm going to guarantee that a Republican will win the 2008 presidential election.

I think it's really a pipe dream that we Democrats cling to that the Democratic nominee could really appeal to the majority of the country. It seems to me that whoever wins the Democratic nomination will be seen as too liberal by the center of the country. Barack Obama actually is too liberal, while Edwards and Clinton are merely perceived as too liberal. Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani is loved by all who remember September 11, even if he is a New Yorker. McCain is always called "the maverick", even though he's the hawkiest candidate of the bunch. Even political hack Mitt Romney has gone from one side to the other and might be seen as some kind of centrist to people who don't pay attention to things, i.e., Americans.

In other words, the Democratic candidates are mostly perceived as "too liberal", even if they're not, while the Republican candidates are mostly perceived as "centrist", even if they're not. Like my dad has frequently said, if it comes to a choice between "Hillary Clinton" and "Satan", he'd rather choose Satan himself. I fear that he's not alone in his viewpoint.

- QP